This invention relates to a methodology to accurately survey (capture) spaces (exterior and interior) in structures, such as buildings or ships, and usage information for those spaces, for facilities management. The uniqueness of this methodology is based on how to conceptualize and capture a building or other structure to ensure an evolving methodology, to create unlimited building intelligence for business users to rapidly and dynamically understand and see a holistic picture of the information provided. This will enable more informed decisions based on contextual graphics to meet business needs/requirements efficiently, innovatively and cost effectively.
The Efficient production of Effective results is at the core of this methodology for managing buildings and other structures (facilities). Economically and accurately establishing the existing building and other structural inventory, and maintaining the reliability of such an inventory, is fundamental to the efficiency of facilities management and the resulting effectiveness of subsequent business decisions (garbage in is garbage out). Knowing what to measure is also as fundamental to the results as accurately measuring it. To produce effective results for managing facility assets requires an understanding of the “use of the assets”, in addition to their size, cost, and location. How space is being used and how well it is being used are keys to the effective use of a facility asset. This requires knowledge of the effective utilization of the asset or, for buildings, the effective use of the available spaces within a building. It is important to understand that space utilization optimization often requires managing multiple virtual sub-spaces within physical spaces that are defined by walls, floors and ceilings. Today's buildings are often designed with minimal walls to reduce constructions costs and maintain use flexibility of the physical spaces. This invention makes it easy to define and maintain both virtual spaces and physical spaces to support automated calculations for space and utilization.
There are millions of existing buildings that have no accurate floor plans to help asset owners manage their building inventory, equipment, furnishings, personnel, and accurately account for them. Typically, government agencies and large asset owners have drawers full of as-built projects drawings, but no updated sets of floor plans of their buildings and other structures. The lack of a repeatable and sustainable methodology to create and maintain what can appear to be a monumental task can cost the business enterprise millions of dollars a year operationally.
The federal government, including military services, is the largest asset owner and manager of facilities. The military services and other federal agencies have laws and regulations that specify how square footages and space utilization should be calculated. The accuracy of their square footages and the use of the buildings and their spaces affect their annual budgets for sustainment, restoration and modernization (also known as operations & maintenance) and space management capabilities help them to make the best use of what they have. This would be a similar case for all state and local governments as well as commercial enterprises.
Another factor that makes this invention a viable solution is the new fiscal reality that is occurring worldwide. Businesses can no longer commit to and absorb costly complex processes and solutions that are time consuming, requiring highly specialized technical skills to acquire and maintain data that's costly and impacts the return on investment. At the same time, businesses cannot sustain themselves by continuing to do the same things the same way and meet the demands of the 21st century: faster, more accurate, more intelligent. As Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same things the same way and expecting different results”.
The goal of this invention is to find an innovative way to capture, account for, and maintain accurate and auditable spaces that make up a building or other structure, that would be easier, faster, cheaper, and thereby realize the potential value a floor plan offers, and provide substantially more intelligence and unlimited growth to support future evolution. This helps asset owners obtain an accurate accounting of the buildings and other structures they own, by creating a foundation of object oriented graphical representations of their existing buildings and other structures to help them manage their buildings and structures more accurately and with “ground truth” intelligence. This invention is simple to practice, and does not require specialized training as an engineer, architect or highly skilled technician to capture the buildings and to maintain the changes that occur to the buildings over time.
Typically, a building is captured with Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) software, drawing a floor plan by capturing the building structure, size and layout by lines and/or walls, all connected and intersecting each other to create a floor plan. This method requires a highly skilled CAD operator who is trained and experienced to produce 3-D CAD floor plans.
In the present invention, an existing building and its layout is conceptualized as multiple spaces that are represented by simple single line polygons, creating an object oriented graphical representation of a building's exterior and interior spaces. Each space preferably is assigned a unique identifier and a series of attributes that describe the occupation and use of the spaces that enables accurate and intelligent business capabilities, that is faster to obtain, is cheaper, and easier to maintain/sustain.